iOS 27 includes three enhancements for FaceTime, with the most notable one being a dual camera feature on some newer iPhone models.
On the iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro, iPhone 17 Pro Max, and iPhone Air, a Dual Capture feature allows you to record video of yourself and what is in front of you at the same time. Starting with iOS 27, this feature is now supported in the FaceTime app on these devices, allowing you to show both your front and rear camera views on a video call.
9to5Mac tested the feature on the iOS 27 beta, as seen in the screenshot below. Tapping on the camera flip button in the bottom-left corner of the viewfinder automatically turns on Dual Capture mode and begins showing the rear camera view alongside the front camera view. You can turn off the front camera view at any time if you prefer to.
If the person on the other end of the call has an older iPhone, they can still view your dual camera feed as long as their device is running iOS 27.
The other two FaceTime improvements on iOS 27:
Improved FaceTime quality on poor connections
Live Captions are now available in Traditional Chinese
iOS 27 is currently available in developer beta, with a public beta to follow in July. The update is expected to be released widely in September.
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I don't know anyone who would use FaceTime and never really understood it. Perhaps it's useful within a family. But other than that, it seems like a headache to keep tabs on which friends or acquaintances use iPhones and who are on Android, when ubiquitous third-party options do exist that work across ecosystems.
I have one friend who has an Android phone. All of my friends and family have iPhones. I use FaceTime most days. But everyone is different.
The "transmit" side of this feature requires BOTH cameras to be active simultaneously. Which implies enough bandwidth, enough ISP capacity, enough video encode capacity. Older phones probably just don't have the HW for at least one of these three.
I don’t know. Remember the iPhone X keynote? Apple literally had third party developers on stage to showcase their double take app. So to some degree it was already possible 9 whole years ago.
Why is this feature not available on every device capable of running iOS 27? This feels like the group FaceTime limitation all over again.
Because it is. As I pointed out elsewhere, 3rd Party apps have been taking advantage of front and rear cams at the same time for years and there is zero functional reason why this is exclusive to the very latest phones only other than Apple greed.
